


I can't look in the mirror (my reflection knows me too well)

by girlsarewolves



Series: the VP collection [17]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Horror, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Death, Doppelganger, Epistolary, Gaslighting, Gen, Horror, Letter, POV First Person, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Private Investigators, Psychological Horror, Science Fiction Horror, Treat, paranormal horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-05
Updated: 2020-08-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:20:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25419844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/girlsarewolves/pseuds/girlsarewolves
Summary: If you are reading this, please. I need you to take everything I am about to tell you completely seriously. I guess in a way, I’m asking you to have faith in me. To believe the strange, awful, impossible things I am about to tell you. And I need you to know that if you are reading this, you cannot trust the woman who goes by the name Dinah Laurel Lance.Because that is my name. But if you are reading this, and you see her, she is not me.
Series: the VP collection [17]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1668076
Comments: 2
Kudos: 3
Collections: Multifandom Horror Exchange (2020)





	I can't look in the mirror (my reflection knows me too well)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VampirePaladin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VampirePaladin/gifts).



> The gaslighting tag is mostly there to be safe - there are some minor instances where it might be appropriate, but it is not a huge element of the fic I don’t believe. However I like to err on the side of caution with that kind of thing to be safe. :)
> 
> There are some thoughts in here regarding police officers and corruption, however I tried to make it clear that the narrator is speaking a) from a cynical place and b) is talking about corrupt cops and just coming from a place where she feels there’s more corruption than honesty. It is definitely a stronger cynicism towards the justice system than the character had in canon, but felt like a place she might go if she didn’t go back to being a lawyer/cape shit wasn’t a thing in her world.

* * *

I never believed in the supernatural. I’ve never been a spiritual person. I had faith in people, in concepts, in systems. 

Maybe it was misplaced faith. Guess it shows someone like me isn’t any better or smarter than people who believe in gods or spirits or reincarnation or other dimensions. I don’t think I thought that way or acted that way, but maybe deep down...maybe I did quietly judge those who believed in something more, in things that science couldn’t prove.

I don’t anymore. I can’t. 

If you are reading this, please. I need you to take everything I am about to tell you completely seriously. I guess in a way, I’m asking you to have faith in me. To believe the strange, awful, impossible things I am about to tell you. And I need you to know that if you are reading this, you cannot trust the woman who goes by the name Dinah Laurel Lance.

Because that is my name. But if you are reading this, and you see her, she is not me.

* * *

I used to be a lawyer. And a damn good one. But a combination of heartbreak, betrayal, loss, and addiction turned me into someone who threw away what she had. I lost my faith for a long time. In those I loved, in myself. Even in the law. So maybe that’s why it became too easy to let it all go. Let that faith slip right through my drunken, shaking fingers.

Eventually, I found my way again. Became a private investigator. I specialize in helping women, people of color, those from the queer community. People who are othered and often feel unheard by the law or unsafe going there for help because far too often the law doesn’t take them seriously or give them the help or protection that they need. Cops, lawyers, judges. Overworked or biased or maybe just plain corrupt, they leave these people vulnerable. I saw it growing up the daughter of a cop. I saw it as a lawyer, a prosecutor. Roll your eyes if you want, but deep down you know it’s true. Or maybe you already know, in your bones and your skin, wherever some piece of shit has hurt you or those you've known, left their mark so you'll never forget. 

This last case I’m working on though...I’m in over my head. And the people I want to rely on, they think I’m off the deep end again. When you read the things I’m about to tell you, you might think so too. But I am stone cold sober. I wish to whatever deity may exist out there that I wasn’t. Falling off the wagon has looked damn good many times over the years, but it has never been as tempting as it is now.

So here’s the crazy:

There are doppelgangers out there. And they want the lives we have.

I know what you’re thinking. This lady’s lost her marbles. But I haven’t. I’m not crazy, I’m not drunk or on drugs, I haven’t had a breakdown of any kind. 

Three weeks ago a woman came to my office from Central City. A young journalist by the name of Linda Park. And she told me someone had been stalking her. Breaking into her apartment, going through her things, stealing some of her photos, trinkets, clothes. Little things here and there. She felt like she was being watched all the time. The police took reports, said they’d keep a look out for the missing items, brushed her off. Told her maybe it was someone she was looking into, maybe she was sticking her nose where it didn’t belong. But they’d send a patrol car around every now and then.

Because that’s what a lot of cops do. Especially in big cities, especially when they’re overworked and expected to do everything from solve murders to make welfare checks. And that’s especially what so many cops do with young, non-white women, and even more so ones that maybe shine a light on some of the corruption going on in their force. 

Technically that wasn’t her, she told me. But it was her paper. Even came from a coworker friend of hers whose dad was a retired detective.

My dad’s a cop, too. A good one, I think. I believe. Maybe because I’m biased. Maybe because he was always a better cop than he was a husband, and often a more dedicated cop than father, though I like to think I’ve moved past the bitterness over that. Even he can’t say there isn’t corruption everywhere. People who join the force for all the wrong reasons, or simply don’t want to bother with the small jobs. 

So I promised her I’ll look into it. And I did. Until a week later when she came in and told me not to worry about it. Everything was fine. While wearing one of the outfits she’d said was stolen, and a necklace her grandmother had given her that had also gone missing. When I asked if the cops had found her missing items, she told me no, she’d simply misplaced them. And to not contact her in the future.

There has been a cold feeling of dread in my gut since she walked out of my office that day. At first I chalked it up to paranoia, but I gave into it, and kept looking into the case. Eventually, I became Miss Park’s new stalker. I contacted her coworker even, and met up for coffee.

Her friend, Iris West-Allen, is tenacious and warm and stubborn. I like her. I pray that she’s still safe. There was a nervousness in her movements that day, one that I couldn’t ignore, and when I asked her about Linda Park, she got quiet for several minutes before talking in a hushed voice. “Something is wrong with Linda. It’s like she’s not really her. Some days I feel like I’m living in one of those alien invasion movies.”

“Do you think her stalker has her spooked?”

“No...I’ve seen Linda spooked. This is not Linda spooked. It’s like the stalker situation never happened. Like everything is perfect. Like she’s merrily acting out the motions of her life. I don’t know how else to explain it. But I’m really worried about her.”

“Do you think I should keep looking into this even though she told me not to?”

I’m not sure why I asked her this. Why I admitted that I’d been kicked off the case. I stopped myself from going so far as to tell Mrs. West-Allen that her friend had basically told me to fuck off forever. Maybe I was searching for permission. Or validation, of this cold dread in the pit of my stomach that wouldn’t leave me alone.

Iris looked me in the eye, set her coffee down, and nodded. “Yes. I think you need to. If she doesn’t want to pay you, I will. Something is wrong. I can feel it.”

That was all the validation I needed.

* * *

I won’t bore you with all the minutiae of my investigation. There were a lot of dead ends and stretches of boring nothingness and trying to figure out where to go, where to look, what to look for even.

Four days after my meeting with Iris, though, I took a risk. A huge and incredibly stupid risk. I watched Linda Park’s apartment for hours until her car finally pulled out from the building’s garage, and then I walked over and entered the complex as though I lived there, and made my way to the apartment she’d brought me to back when she first hired me. I picked the lock with practiced ease that would fill my father with equal measures of shame and pride, and I went into the apartment.

This is where that dread that I chalked up to paranoia became a full blown terror.

Everything was neatly arranged, clean, almost exactly how it had been when she first brought me. Except it was missing those little touches of someone human living there. Of being lived in at all. Nothing was crooked or out of place. All her books were perfectly arranged, nothing missing. Not a one laying on top of a row, or set on the coffee table because she wasn’t done or hadn’t gotten around to putting it away. Even her remotes were perfectly arranged on the television stand. The wires behind the TV were neatly wrapped up into one giant cable. No dishes were out, no sign of food, every chair perfectly in place, spaced evenly apart. The bedroom was worse.

It was like something for a magazine shoot. I’ve stayed in five star hotels that weren’t made up as perfectly as that bedroom. I didn’t bother checking the bathroom. I knew what I would find. I knew I had to be careful, because an apartment this perfect would give away any hint of an intruder ruffling through, searching for something amiss.

On a whim I opened the closet. That’s when I fucked up. That’s when I screamed.

I need you to believe what I am telling you. Most of all, I  need  you to believe what comes next.

Linda Park was in that closet. The real Linda Park. The very lifeless Linda Park. Her body wrapped in a clear bag hanging amidst all the perfectly sorted clothes. Eyes open and staring out in a permanently fixed expression of horror.

I screamed and I ran. I didn’t close the closet door. I didn’t make sure I left everything as perfect as I’d found it. Because I had seen Linda in her car, leaving the apartment complex, and yet there she was, dead and hanging in the closet. I ran out of the back exit of the building, ran to my car, and floored it. I stopped following Linda. I texted Iris and told her to be careful. To never be alone with Linda, and I couldn’t explain why. I blocked her number after.

The next day, one of my windows was open. The one by the fire stairwell outside. Some of my things felt out of place, and a picture of me and my dad was missing. That terror grew colder. Every day, no matter how well I lock everything, something is wrong when I wake up or come home. So I stopped leaving. I stopped sleeping.

That’s how I saw her.

She looked just like me.

I think we got in a scuffle. I think she knocked me out. When I came to, I was on my sofa, the TV on with the volume turned down. There was an empty bottle of wine on the coffee table. I swear to you, I did not drink it. I wouldn’t. I couldn’t.

I called my father and cried and told him I love him. He asked me what was wrong, and I lied. I told him I was thinking of my ex fiance, Oliver, and my sister, Sara, and my ex, Tommy. Of everything that went wrong with them. With me. Of not being able to move on. Of feeling like the cheating and the leaving and the dying was all my fault. Maybe it wasn’t all lies. I promised him I would come by soon, but if you are reading this, I likely never got the chance. I begged him that if I started acting weird, not to push. Not to worry.

He asked me if I'd been drinking. I told him no. He didn't believe me, I could tell. But that I know for sure wasn't a lie.

My mother called not long after. She wanted to come see me, wanted me to come stay with her. She promised me that she believed me when I said I hadn't been drinking, but something was clearly wrong, and she and my dad were worried. I told her too much. Told her I got too close to something too deep for me to handle. I told her that there are things going on that we can't explain, that we can't even understand. She just asked me what happened. If I was on something, if I'd pushed myself too hard and just snapped. I told her I loved her, and to never come near me again. Then I turned off my phone and started writing this.

I don't think I have much time life.

To be honest, I’m not sure why anyone would want my life. But then I think of the Linda that came and fired me. Who lived in a perfectly untouched apartment. Who happily goes through the motions. Is it just existence they crave? Is this something paranormal, or extraterrestrial? I cannot say. 

I hope that those who know me will know, if she takes my life, that she isn’t me. But it’s so hard to believe. Maybe it's better for them if they don't.

I’m giving this letter to a friend with instructions to deliver it to you should I go missing or if I start acting strangely. I told her the signs. I haven’t told her the contents of this, only made her swear she wouldn’t look. Maybe if she doesn’t know, one won’t come for her. Maybe, somehow, Linda stumbled on something that got their attention. And then I did the same. Maybe they won’t come for everyone.

I wasn’t sure who else to send this to, Detective West. But if you’re anything like my father, you’re a good man and a good cop, no matter your flaws. And you believe in justice. Please. Don’t make the mistakes I made. Protect those you love from this fate. Above all, be careful.

There could be another you out there, waiting.

* * *


End file.
